Knights

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Hush,” she said. “Do not court damnation by speaking lies. I cannot begrudge Gareth his poor comforts—he was always kind to me, though I have been no sort of wife to him. Do you think she will ever bear him a child?”

  “I cannot predict the future,” he answered gently, “but I think not. Such women profit by their barrenness, and surely know how to maintain the advantage.”

  “It makes me sad to think that Gareth may never have children,” Elaina confessed, and again she seemed to hear some silent piper, some tune just beyond the ken of Dane’s ears. “He would make a fine father.”

  Dane nodded. “Gareth has been a good brother to Edward and me, as near a thing to a father as we’ve had.”

  Elaina returned to the bench where she had been sitting when Dane first entered the little courtyard with Edward and Sister Margaret. She folded her hands in her lap and looked as pure and peaceful, sitting there, as an angel indulging in a daydream. “I had despaired of you, Dane,” she said, just when he thought she’d forgotten his presence entirely. “I wondered if you would ever return and be a husband to your lovely Gloriana.”

  “You know her, then.” It was all Dane could say in that moment.

  “Of course I know her,” Elaina scolded, laughing, and she was herself again, her old self, when she met his eyes. “Gloriana has lived in or near Hadleigh Castle since she was twelve, after all. How old was she when she became your bride, Dane?”

  “Seven,” Dane admitted. “It’s barbaric, this marrying of children to children. I will not countenance such a thing when I have sons and daughters of my own.”

  Elaina arched an eyebrow and smiled. “Beware of rash vows, Kenbrook,” she warned, in a teasing tone. “Fate is tempted by words like ’never’ and ’always’ and invariably seeks to make a mockery of whoever uses them. Anyway, in this case the match was a good one, made in higher kingdoms than our own.”

  Dane sat beside her, uttering a heavy sigh as he did so. “I believe I love another woman,” he said. Even that morning, before prayers, he would have said he loved Mariette without qualification, but now he wasn’t so sure. He had been seared, however much he wished it weren’t so, by Gloriana’s peculiar fire. He had never expected such beauty, such spirit, such exquisite nobility.

  “Goose,” Elaina said. “Gloriana is your destiny, and you are hers. I knew it when she first stepped through that gate, just there.” She pointed, and Dane saw an ordinary portal and was reminded of why his sister-in-law lived in the abbey, rather than at Hadleigh Castle with her husband. “Do you know what lies on the other side of that gate, Dane?”

  He shook his head, deeply saddened. “No, sweet.”

  “Another world,” Elaina replied. She was very pale, and he saw fragile blue veins pulsing beneath the soft flesh of her temple. “It is a passageway into the world ours will one day become. And there are other gates, other thresholds and corridors, that lead to still other—”

  Dane had taken her hand; he raised it to his lips and kissed the knuckles lightly. “Shh,” he whispered, heartsick, “You grow weary, Elaina. I have tired you, and you must rest.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said, and tears pooled in her lashes as she rose from the bench and pulled free of Dane’s grasp. “Yes, I must lie down. I can hear it, you see.” Elaina raised both hands to her ears, as if to shut out some dreadful din. “Such a wretched, hurried place, full of carts without horses to pull them, moving fast and trumpeting to each other, like a thousand stags in a thousand forests—”

  Dane prayed she would leave the courtyard, before he broke down and wept for her. “I will come again,” he promised, for it was all he had to offer. Though he had bought splendid gifts for Elaina, they were in his chamber at Hadleigh Castle, for he had not thought to fetch them before leaving his brother’s keep.

  “Send Gloriana to me on the morrow,” Elaina pleaded, hesitating at the gate he and Edward and the abbess had used, as wraithlike and fragile as a child. “I must see her.”

  At his nod of acquiescence, which she waited to see, she vanished.

  Dane lingered a few moments, recovering himself, and then strode into the larger courtyard, where he found Edward and the abbess, waiting with the horses. There was no sign of Elaina, for she had no doubt retreated to the chapel or her cell.

  Dane took a coin from the leather bag tied to his belt and pressed it into the abbess’s callused palm, shutting her bony fingers around it. He did not ask Sister Margaret to look after Elaina, for that would have been an insult, since everyone knew she was devoted and made every effort on Lady Hadleigh’s behalf. Instead, Dane simply mounted Peleus and reined the great, impatient animal toward the outer gate.

  “What did you expect to gain by visiting Elaina?” Edward asked when they were away from the abbey and the drawbridge was in plain sight, just ahead.

  It was an intuitive question, and Dane had no sensible offer to give. “I am fond of the lady,” he said evenly. “As you should be, since she was as near a mother as you ever had.”

  Edward’s youthful, tumultuous skin was flushed. “It is said that Elaina is a witch, that she casts spells. She made the swine die one year, and another—”

  “Swill!” Dane interrupted furiously. “What ignorant, superstitious dolt dared utter such a claim?”

  The boy subsided, but he did so ungraciously. “Do you think I’d tell you, Kenbrook?” he asked. “And see you cut out their tongues with your dagger?”

  Dane tipped back his head and gave a raw burst of laughter. There was no mirth in the sound and no mercy in Dane himself. “That I would do,” he said, and sobered. “Have a care, Edward. There are those who would burn Elaina for her foibles and think it a service to the Almighty. Be vigilant, if you care for our lady sister at all, and put a stop to such talk whenever you hear it.”

  Edward swallowed hard, and then he nodded.

  No other words passed between the two brothers as they rode side by side over the drawbridge, passing through the outer bailey and dismounting at the stables. Edward left his gelding to the care of a groom, while Dane, troubled, attended to Peleus himself.

  Gloriana knelt in the attic of the house that had been her father’s and was now hers, staring at the contents of the last trunk, the one in the farthest, dustiest corner. Edwenna had taken great care to hide the truth about her adopted daughter.

  The first item Gloriana removed was wrapped in porous cloth, and even before she unwound the bandagelike covering, she knew the doll would be inside. The elegant model of a queen yet to be born, with its bright Tudor hair and pale skin, its jeweled dress and tiny slippers.

  “Elizabeth I,” Gloriana whispered. She who would come to the throne in the sixteenth century and reign over a turbulent England for a great many years. She whose nickname Gloriana had taken for her own.

  Gloriana closed her eyes and swayed slightly, there in the stifling, dusty heat of the attic. Carefully, with trembling hands, she laid the costly doll aside and took another bundle from the trunk. Trousers—jeans, she’d called them, in that other incarnation. A small garment—a T-shirt, she remembered—cut to fit a child. Shoes, hard-soled and yet flexible.

  Studying these items, Gloriana felt exultation, followed by a surge of nausea. With a combination of tenderness and fear, she tucked them all back in the trunk and closed the lid quickly. She did not begin to understand what had happened to her, all those years ago, but she knew that Edwenna had been wise in hiding them. The people of Hadleigh Village would surely deem her a witch if they saw these strange belongings.

  Although Gloriana had never seen anyone burned or hanged for having dealings with the devil, she knew such things were not uncommon. Staring at the trunk, her grubby hands knotted together in her lap, Gloriana racked her brain. A part of her wanted to destroy everything, to burn the whole house to the ground if that was what it took, but another part cherished these odd possessions. They were, after all, her last link with Megan, the child she had been, and the faraway world that
had spawned her.

  She swallowed and leaned forward, like a supplicant before the altar of God, her forehead pressed to the filthy lid of the trunk. If only there were somebody she could go to, somebody who would give her counsel and comfort. But she dared trust no one—not Edward, her closest friend, not Gareth, generous as he was, and especially not Kenbrook, her erstwhile husband. He wanted to be rid of her in order to take the Frenchwoman to wife and might even betray her in order to be free.

  Gloriana’s breath was quick and shallow, and she began to feel light-headed, as if she would swoon. No, she told herself, clutching her stomach with both hands now, like a poison victim, and rocking back and forth on her knees. No, Dane would never permit her to be burned as a witch. But he might well put her away in a convent, as Gareth had banished Elaina to the abbey; it would salve Kenbrook’s conscience if he could say his first wife was mad. He’d be granted an annulment, no doubt, and no one would blame him for marrying again.

  Gloriana rose shakily to her feet, smoothing her kirtle with fitful motions of her hands, though it was hopelessly crumpled and much soiled. She drew a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Perhaps, she reflected, feeling sick, she really was a witch, an unwitting tool of Lucifer. The thought made her shudder, for although Gloriana was rebellious, daydreaming during mass and often falling asleep in vespers, refusing to cover her hair except when she was actually inside the church, there was no evil in her.

  She must get rid of the items inside the chest at the first viable opportunity and never speak of what she remembered.

  She crossed the attic floor and stooped to pass through the tiny doorway, which opened onto a step and narrow staircase, every step hewn from solid oak. Trailing dirty fingers along the wall, she made her way down to the second floor and then the first. The familiar furniture gave her comfort; she could almost make herself believe that Edwenna would come bustling around a corner, full of kindly purpose, and make everything all right.

  Gloriana sat down on the bottommost step and propped her chin in her hands. She had not been attempting to manipulate Kenbrook earlier, in the solar, when she’d told him she would live in her own house and manage her personal affairs herself. Nor had she been making an empty threat. Pride would not allow her to live under the same roof with Dane St. Gregory while he courted and wooed another woman.

  An angry tear streaked down Gloriana’s smudged cheek, and she struck it away with a quick dash of her hand. That was one decision made—all well and good. But the fact remained that she loved Kenbrook with the whole of her heart and the full range of her soul. Every instinct urged her to fight for him and for the children who would never be born if he threw her away.

  The front door opened, its huge iron hinges creaking, and Gloriana gazed, with some vexation and no little surprise, upon the very one she’d been thinking about, her husband.

  She quelled an urge to touch her hair and arrange her skirts. “What do you want?” she demanded, looking him up and down.

  He sighed and thrust a hand through his gilt hair. “You are an unholy mess,” he said, ignoring her question, which had been, in her opinion, a reasonable one. “What have you been doing?”

  Gloriana thought of the doll, the odd clothing, the shoes of which the thirteenth century knew no like. “I hardly think I need explain,” she said. “This is my house, after all, and what I do within these walls is my own concern.”

  Dane leaned against the heavy wooden door, which was quite tall and some four inches thick, and sighed again. His arms, as was his habit, were folded across his chest. “I will not debate that point with you,” he told her, not unkindly. “Not now, at least. You are plainly upset, and the fault is mine. I truly regret any sorrow I might have caused you.”

  Gloriana waited in silence. Whatever remorse Kenbrook might feel, he wasn’t going to say he’d changed his mind about annulling their marriage. She knew that by the expression on his face.

  “In time,” he said, “you will understand.”

  Gloriana suppressed an unseemly impulse to spit upon his boots, which were well within range. “I understand now,” she replied, without raising her voice or even blushing. “You are a scoundrel, a liar, and a cheat. I shall be glad to see the back of you.”

  Dane shook his head and pushed away from the door with a sleek, easy grace that did unreasonable things to Gloriana’s heart. “I am all those things,” he agreed, “and more.”

  It took the passion out of her rage, what Kenbrook said, and Gloriana was annoyed. “Please go away,” she said.

  He came closer, curving his long fingers around the top of the newel post, looking down at Gloriana through lashes too thick to belong to a man. “I saw the lady Elaina today,” he said, as if she had not just ordered him out of her house. “She wishes you to visit her, on the morrow.”

  As quickly as that, Gloriana’s mood was transformed. “Is she well?” she asked softly.

  Dane did not reply but there was no need of it anyway, for the answer showed plainly in his face.

  Chapter 4

  Vespers, conducted in the chapel by Friar Cradoc, made a formal end to the Sabbath day. Gloriana attended, wearing a fresh kirtle the color of lilacs and a white wimple that fitted tightly around her face. Her heart was not prayerful as she sat, barely able to keep from fidgeting, in the customary pew, for there were too many other matters on her mind.

  Dane was always a part of her thoughts, and of course Elaina, who wanted a visit from her on the morrow. Then, like a thorn in a festering wound, there was the Frenchwoman, Mariette de Troyes, who sat circumspectly in the back of the chapel with her maid and the red-haired man called Maxen. Mariette was beautiful, in a fragile, ethereal sort of way but, Gloriana thought uncharitably, too frail by half to hold her own with a man like Kenbrook.

  Perhaps out of diplomacy, though Gloriana was reluctant to credit the man with the sensitivity such an act would require, her husband had taken a seat at the front of the small, ancient church. Gareth sat at his right side, and Edward at his left.

  Friar Cradoc, perhaps with St. Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing in mind, alternately droned and thundered his way through unending litanies of mortification, adoration, gratitude, and, finally, supplication.

  A festive supper would follow the service, the first of many events planned to celebrate the knighthood of Edward and the seven other young men who had trained with him. No doubt Mademoiselle de Troyes would be installed at the head table, Gloriana reflected miserably. Perhaps she would even be bold enough to sit beside Dane as if she were already his wife.

  Color suffused Gloriana’s face at the prospect of such a humiliation, and although she had been ravenously hungry only moments before, having missed the midday meal, her stomach felt sour.

  Then the service was over, and Gareth, being the liege lord of nearly everyone present, was first to rise and make his way down the center aisle, striding without pause toward the doors. Dane, who was behind him, stopped beside Gloriana’s pew and gazed down at her with a mingling of amusement and vexed curiosity in his eyes.

  She longed to wrench off her headdress and fling it in his face, lest he be pleased with her in even that small way. Another pan of her yearned shamelessly for his approval.

  He extended his hand to her, and she hesitated. The chapel by then was already empty, except for them, for people were hungry and eager to begin the merrymaking.

  With unaccustomed awkwardness, Gloriana rose and glanced back toward the place where Mariette had sat, between her maid and the Welshman. “I will not sit at your left hand,” she said with tremulous certainty, “while your mistress holds court at your right.”

  Dane let his hand fall to his side. “Surely you cannot think I would disgrace you in such a way—or Mariette.”

  “On the contrary,” Gloriana replied evenly, and without particular rancor, “I cannot think why you would hesitate.” She eased past him, into the aisle, moving briskly toward the exit, and was not surprised w
hen he kept pace with her.

  The dusk was redolent with the perfumes of summer—the vital, reedy scent of the nearby lake, the woodsy smell of the forest, the acrid fragrance of smoke, wooing the wayfarer home to safety and supper. Torches blazed, setting the courtyard alight, and carts bearing a mummers’ troupe rattled noisily over the cobblestones.

  Gloriana felt an odd twinge of something very like nostalgia, a fear that at any moment she might be snatched from these people, this time, this place, never to return. As dangerous as it was, as dirty and backward, this simple world was her home, and she loved it.

  “Do you think me such a brute?” Dane asked, after pondering her accusation for several moments, effectively jarring her out of her unhappy ponderings. “Can you possibly believe I designed this coil on purpose, with the intention of causing you hurt?”

  She stopped and stared up at him, at the same time wrenching the hateful wimple off her head. She saw Dane’s eyes widen momentarily as her hair spilled to freedom in the torchlight, and did not trouble herself to wonder what he was thinking. In truth, she did not care. “Yes, Kenbrook,” she said, “I think you are indeed a brute, and other things besides. I would never credit you with planning the injury you’ve done me—your failing, sir, is not malice, but unheeding selfishness. You have considered your own desires in the matter and little else.”

  She made to walk away from him, but he stopped her, taking that now-familiar hold on her arm, one neither tender nor harsh. The glow of the torches danced eerily over his patrician features, and Gloriana was reminded that he was a warrior, said to be fearless and utterly without mercy on the battlefield.

  “Then you will be glad to be free of me,” he said, with quiet logic.

  A lump formed in Gloriana’s throat, fair choking her, and humiliating tears stung her eyes. “I have wasted my life, waiting for you,” she answered, in a gasping whisper. There were others in the courtyard, after all, and their conversation should have been a private one. “I could have had a home where I might be mistress, a husband who loved me, a child or two. You have robbed me of all those things. Now you expect to cloister me, like some troublesome possession you will neither keep near at hand nor truly discard. As I said today in the house where I shall go to live as soon as Edward’s been knighted, you may join your friend, the devil, in the fires of hell.”